Terry Anderson has no great lessons for anybody. "The only thing I can offer you is my certain knowledge that each one of us can win through the most terrible of circumstances," the former hostage said yesterday to more than 600 people attending the Visiting Nurse Association of Lehigh County Celebrity Luncheon.

Yesterday, the VNA presented a check for $20,000, the proceeds from this series, to VNA board Chairman David Sautter. Since the series began nine years ago, $172,000 has been raised for needy patients.

Anderson listed himself as one of those he described as "perfectly normal men, with no special courage," who were taken captive and held hostage by radical fundamentalists in Lebanon. Anderson was held for seven years.

Despite being shuttled from jail to jail, blindfolded and mistreated, he said, the men survived because "it is very, very difficult to break the human spirit."

Yesterday, as he spoke of his years of captivity, Anderson talked about the horror of being a hostage and the impact it has had on his life. Anderson said being chained to a wall for seven years is, most of all, boring.

He was snatched off the street and went from the bright morning sunshine to the darkness of an underground prison on a beautiful Saturday morning. He had just finished playing tennis and began seven years of captivity wearing white tennis shorts and shirt.

On the 24th day of captivity he asked the guards to shoot him because he knew the silence and darkness of the blindfold would drive him crazy. When they did not shoot him, he told the guards he was not an animal and did not deserve to be treated that way. And, he asked for a Bible.

The next day, a brand new Bible was tossed into his cell. He read it from cover to cover at least 50 times.

He was moved more than 20 times. Prisoners did not like to be moved. It wasn't so much being completely wrapped in masking tape and hidden in a car or truck, but rather the fear of the unknown. "In an uncertain world the small bit of comfort of being used to a place was very difficult to give up," he said.

Anderson is grateful to every one of the men who shared captivity with him. They supported, leaned on and defended each other, he said.

One of the hardest things they were faced with was trying to figure out the attitude they would use toward the guards upon whom they were totally dependent. Guards ran the gamut from the psychologically cruel to vicious to relatively ordinary. "How do you maintain your dignity and integrity with men who have absolute power over you?" he asked. The men argued with guards, fought and talked with them. Neither side converted the other.

Anderson coped by writing poetry and using sign language to converse.

"It was not always grim and terrible. We laughed a lot. Sometimes it was bitter," he said in telling of the time he and another captive heard a familiar sound. A bell, ringing on a street outside their underground cell reminded them of the ice cream man in the truck who used to visit their neighborhoods. They called the guard and asked him what the bell signified. It was the ice cream man, the guard told them. They asked the guard to get them ice cream. He did.

In 1986, he was moved to a 6- by 6-foot cell with a mattress, two bottles (one was for water) and no lights. He started to remember the sign language he learned in high school and made up six letters for those he forgot. He taught his cellmate how to sign, then taught the two men assigned to the cell across the hall. They could not talk to each other, but they could and did communicate through the windows using their fingers.

"I can tell you isolation is a terrible thing, and without signing I wouldn't have survived, and I couldn't have survived without my companions," he said.

But, he said, "I could not have survived at all without my faith." Six months before his capture Anderson returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood. "I needed that faith. It kept me from despair." He always believed he would be freed, and it was faith that allowed him to continue to summon up the will to believe.

Of his strong faith in God he said, "He comforted and guided me. He helped me find the way through the anger, bitterness and hatred."

He said he came to know himself very well. "I had a lot of time to examine myself. There was a lot I didn't like." He has become more contemplative as a result of the years of captivity.

Anderson is moving on with his life. "I am very grateful to this country and the thousands and thousands of people who cared for us, who prayed for us. I am so grateful. Every day is a joy." And, he added, "I am very grateful for all of the things I have."

But, he said, "I will not forget."

After his release two years ago, he was treated by a Royal Air Force psychiatrist who specializes in prisoner decompression. And he and his wife spent three months on Antigua with the daughter he had never met. "It was time we needed to get to know each other," he said.

The things he is sure of are his faith and "my lady. And that is no small thing."

Besides writing, he is working with a New York committee that is studying constitutional revision. And the former Marine is working with other Vietnam veterans to build a school in Vietnam.

Today he and his wife, Madeline, are raising their daughter in an old home they are refurbishing in Yonkers, N.Y. He is writing another book on spirituality and hopes to write another on Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yesterday, as reporters were waiting to interview Anderson, in he walked. No one noticed him. No entourage. Just him. Very unassuming. He walked around the room and introduced himself, then sat down and talked.

When a microphone in the dining room was not working properly, he borrowed a length of tape from the television camera man, taped two microphones together and began to talk. Every one in the room heard him.